Step Up to a Better Life with the Help of a Good Coach

Take a minute and think of what it would be like if a football team didn’t have a coach. Players would run every which way, the ref would work his whistle overtime, and the likelihood of the team winning the game would be slim. But there’s a new game in town, and it isn’t football. This fantastic new resource is called “Life Coaching.” Because it is relatively new, many of us may wonder what a life coach does, and how life coaching and traditional therapy differ.

What is life coaching?

Coaching and therapy have similarities and differences. Here are the two major differences:

• Training. Psychotherapy is structured and clinical. There are requirements and standards that a would-be therapist must accomplish before he or she can start seeing patients. Therapy is much more formal than coaching and works along a set of standardized guidelines.

  Life coaches earn certifications which prove they've spent over a hundred hours of practice, and they have invested in many hours of study. Because life coaching is relatively new, specific, formal standards and requirements are still in the developmental stages. Some of the most successful people in the world today have achieved amazing pinnacles through the use of a life coach.

• Methodology: Simply put, a clinical therapist generally focuses on the past: what brought the patient in to seek help? What has happened in this person’s personal history to create the problems he or she is now dealing with?

  A life coach focuses on the present and future. Your life coach will not dwell upon the past, but will begin today and work toward helping you create the future you want, irregardless of what brought you to this point in your life. Your life coach focuses on guiding you toward the manifestation of your dreams.

More definitions of a life coach

Many sports analogies are used to describe life coaches. Sometimes coaches are called your “cheerleaders.” But maybe picturing your life coach as a football, basketball, or soccer coach will give you a better idea of what a life coach does.

• Your life coach helps you identify and put into play: your goals, dreams, values and life's purpose.
• Your life coach helps you to “get out of your own way” and accomplish those things you have always wanted to do but haven’t had the motivation, will, inspiration or self-esteem to either begin or complete your dreams.
• A life coach helps you establish new ways of thinking. Your life coach will teach you how to apply your new thinking to new behaviors and action plans.
• Because you maintain contact with your life coach, you avoid the typical “sliding backwards” that often happens to people who try to change things on their own.
• Together, you and your life coach determine what you want to accomplish and achieve in your future: your past makes little difference.
• In life coaching, you will focus on what you need to do to live a full life and make conscious choices.
• The results you can achieve through life coaching generally happen much more quickly than with therapy. Therapy, through the methods of examining your past, can take years. Conversely, you can see results through life coaching within weeks or months. “Take Control of Your Life” is a life coach’s motto.